The Sceptic's Guide to Spotting Impossible Beasts
by Pitry
Summary: Somewhere out there there's a Crumple-Horned Snorkack with Hermione Granger's name on it.


**Author:** Pitry  
**Title:** The Sceptic's Guide to Spotting Impossible Beasts  
**Characters:** Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood  
**Rating:** PG  
**Warnings:** None.  
**Summary:** Somewhere out there there's a Crumple-Horned Snorkack with Hermione Granger's name on it.  
**Author's Notes:** Written for the hp-friendship fest on LJ, for the prompt "Going traveling after the war". With many thanks to my wonderful beta, kjmom1. All mistakes still in the text are mine.

The adult Crumple-Horned Snorkack is about five feet long and weighs an average of 55kg. The Crumple-Horned Snorkack has a body covered with rough silver scales. The Crumple-Horned Snorkack is an aquatic creature, and lives mainly in closed bodies of waters in cold areas, mainly in the north. The horn of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack is three feet long and ten inches wide, and unlike the rest of the Snorkack, it is green.

Oh, and there's one more thing about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, which every wizard or witch wishing to hunt it should know. The Crumple-Horned Snorkack doesn't exist.

"But there's no such thing as a Crumple-Horned Snorkack," Hermione says in exasperation to Ron.

"Then don't go," Ron says and reaches for some more scrambled eggs.

"But there's no such thing as a Crumple-Horned Snorkack," Hermione insists to Harry.

"She's really looking forwards to it, though," Harry says with a shrug and a small smile.

"But there's no such thing as a Crumple-Horned Snorkack," Hermione tells Luna gently, "but I'll go with you anyway. Just to prove to you that they're not real!"

The smile on Luna's lips lights up her entire face.

Hermione, of course, has been reading everything she could find about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, which isn't that much. First thing the next morning she asks Luna, "Shouldn't we go to Sweden? Isn't that where they are?"

Luna doesn't look fussed. "No, they can live in any northern country. Most sightings have been in Sweden, of course, but my father and I were always planning to look for them in the Scottish lochs. He thought it could be quite the scientific discovery."

Luna's smile wavers as she mentions her father, so Hermione doesn't say another word. And the next second, Luna goes on about how the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks leave the lochs three times a year to climb on the mountains. She doesn't quite explain how they do that, and nothing in the material Hermione has read suggests they have legs, but Hermione bites her tongue and doesn't challenge Luna. She's just glad Luna is smiling again.

Instead of listening to Luna's nonsense, she's already running the list of things they would need for the trip in her mind. Luna doesn't notice anyway.

Their first day is spent circling Loch Ness. They get there in the morning and by lunchtime they're both starving so they stop for a picnic next to the visitor centre. Hermione brought sandwiches and cakes and tells Luna how this is so much better than the last time she went camping. Luna tells her about all the food her father brought when they last went on holiday, but then adds, "These sandwiches are very nice, though. My father always got a bit confused, and usually put chocolate and beef in the same sandwich."

"Oh, dear," Hermione says before she manages to stop herself. "What did you do then?"

"Oh, well, I wanted to just take the beef out and wash it, but father had this charm to turn the chocolate into mustard." She steals a glance at the visitor centre. "We ended up eating in a small Muggle restaurant that day; it was so much fun."

Hermione laughs, even though she doesn't mean to. Luna isn't offended at all.

"I don't think we're going to find anything in Loch Ness," Luna says at night, right before they go to sleep. "The monster must have made them all migrate a long time ago."

"Yeah," Hermione says between one yawn and the next. "Or all the people who are looking for the monster."

"Oh, the monster is real!" Luna starts to tell Hermione all about the monster's origin and how it is a Something-Or-Other, but Hermione falls asleep in the middle.

Their next stop is Loch Garry, but as soon as Luna sees it, she shakes her head. "Look at the dams," she points to the man-made barriers. "There won't be anything here."

Loch Lomond is lacking in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, too. Luna says "_Sadly_ lacking," and Hermione just shakes her head.

That night, Hermione and Luna go to have some fun in Glasgow. After all, they can't search for Snorkacks in the dark. They start in a small Muggle restaurant, then go to this nice club off St Mungo Avenue. Hermione starts dancing like a normal person, but next to her Luna exercises some of her questionable judgement and looks more like she's trying to catch flies than dance. Hermione can feel herself reddening with embarrassment, until she sees some Muggles looking at Luna and sniggering. She's not quite sure why she's angry all of a sudden, but at that point she gets even closer to Luna and starts repeating the same dance movement.

Luna looks surprised for a moment, then happy, then closes her eyes and submits to the music. After a while, Hermione does the same. She's never had so much fun dancing in her whole life.

Before they turn the light in the tent off, Luna tells her it's a dance her mother had taught her. "I'm glad you know it now, too," Luna says. "After my mother died, only me and Dad knew it, and now there's only me."

"I'm glad I know it too," Hermione says. She's surprised when she realises she actually means it.

Next morning the both wake up with a headache. Hermione wants to sleep in - "It's still the holidays, after all!" - but Luna won't have any of that. They Apparate to Loch Oich, because Luna says they've gone too far south. There are no Crumple-Horned Snorkacks there, but they have fun watching the salmon for a while.

They camp again, and finally Hermione has some time to read about the beast. "Luna?" she asks gently.

"Yes?" Luna asks. She has been gazing at the stars quietly for the past half hour, reflecting Hermione's own silence. Hermione doesn't mind. It's a good silence. A comfortable silence. It's not one of those heavy, uncomfortable bouts of silence after angry words or disagreement. They're just having fun - in silence.

"It says here that the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks don't come out until the end of September at the very earliest."

"That's what my father always thought, yeah," Luna says in a dreamy voice.

"It's still August."

"Oh, I know. But you know, there's always the chance he was wrong. And we can't go in September, we're going back to Hogwarts in a few days."

Hermione stares at her for a moment. "Then why are we here?" she blurts out at last. "There's no point! We're not going to see any Snorkacks anyway!"

"But I thought you didn't believe they exist," Luna says, and Hermione notices she's grinning. "So you didn't think we're going to see them in the first place."

"Yes, but now - " Hermione starts arguing out of habit, then pauses. She _didn't_ think they were going to see any Snorkacks, after all. She thought this trip was pointless from the get-go. Then why _does_ she care, all of a sudden, that Snorkacks don't even come out in August? "But you believe they exist," she says at last.

Luna considers her words for a moment. "My father believed they exist," she says eventually. "And I enjoyed believing they exist because he believed they exist. And we had fun, believing they exist together all these years, even though we've never seen one. And if we don't see one now - that won't change anything, see?"

Hermione thinks about it for a moment. She comes to the conclusion it's probably one of the more sensible things Luna Lovegood has ever said. "Yeah. It makes sense," she answers, and goes back to her reading about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

"It would be nice to see one, though," Luna says when they're both snuggled comfortably, each in her own bed, and the light has been turned off.

"Yeah," Hermione answers. "It would be." She thinks Luna has already fallen asleep.

They don't see one the next day either. And the one after that, and the one after that. But Luna doesn't give up, and her enthusiasm makes Hermione want to go on, too. She doesn't get tired of the great lakes or of camping, and every couple of nights they go out for dinner in some fancy Scottish restaurant and one time they even catch a Muggle film. It has great space whales in it, and Luna feels completely vindicated. "See?" she says, "Muggles believes in impossible beasts, too!"

"Oh, I'll believe in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks before I'll believe in space whales!" Hermione laughs.

Before they know it, it's the end of August and their last night camping. They have to go back tomorrow if they want to make the Hogwarts Express on the first of September. Before the trip, Hermione thought that two weeks alone with Luna Lovegood would be a disaster. Now she wishes she had more time in the late summer sunshine, near the lochs and in the company of her friend.

When they fold their tent the very next morning, Luna asks whether they should Apparate back to the Burrow, but Hermione says, "Let's try one more loch."

Luna's smile is radiant, like a small sun.

The don't Apparate straight to the banks of the loch, but to a hill nearby, and then they start climbing. "Come on," Luna encourages Hermione when she gets too tired. "Just a couple more steps. You can do it!"

The sun is baking her, a slow, uncomfortable torture. Hermione thinks that perhaps she _can't_ do it, but she doesn't want to disappoint Luna, so she takes one more step, then another, then another. She wipes the sweat from her brow and takes another step.

And then they're there.

The lake is completely calm. The water's an incredible shade of blue. She didn't think water could ever be this blue. And they're clear! She can't tell where the mountain ends and its reflection begins. And far away, right before the horizon, the sunlight flickers on the lake.

She looks at that spot, far away in the lake, where there are small waves and the sun dances on the water, and all of a sudden the thought comes to her mind that maybe it's not the water that reflect the sun, but something else, something large and silvery, right beneath the surface of the water. She looks harder at the same spot, and tries to see what is there, right before the horizon.

And then, for just a split second, she sees it. A huge beast, with silver scales all over its body. An incredible creature, not a fish but not a mammal either, and on its small, squahsed head a huge, wide horn.

And with a blink of the eye, it's gone.

**-X-**

The sun is about to set. Hermione and Luna walk, side by side, on the path that leads to the Burrow. They're both tired and smelly and hungry, and they're both looking forward to Molly's cooking and her soft, comfortable beds.

Hermione glances at the next hill where, she knows, Luna Lovegood's childhood home used to be. And then she turns her head and watches Luna. Luna, she can see, may be walking right next to her, but her mind, oh, her mind is somewhere else entirely.

"You know," she says quietly, "I've had so much fun this trip."

"Me too," Luna says in a dreamy voice and smiles. "I really missed camping."

"I was thinking..." Hermione hesitates for a moment. She thinks of the trip and decides life's too short to hesitate. "Maybe next year we could go look for some Nargle colony or something."

Luna laughs. "Nargles don't live in colonies!" she says, clearly amused by Hermione's mistake. "And we don't need to look for them, they're everywhere. And I wouldn't, anyway - they can be quite dangerous, you see. But my father and I did think of going one day to see the pygmy elephants in the forests of Transylvania. No one's seen them before but Dad always said they had to be there because..."

Luna goes on and on, and Hermione listens to every word.


End file.
